Harry Potter Read-a-thon Launched to Aid Theatre

A reading event featuring every Harry Potter novel, encompassing over one million words across 120 hours, has commenced to support a theatre in its efforts to keep “heads above water” and “the doors open”. This initiative, named The Great Harry Potter marathon, involves more than 70 individuals reading through each book in J.K Rowling’s renowned series, aiming to collect £10,000 for The Fisher Theatre, located in Bungay, Suffolk. Participants will collectively immerse themselves in the wizarding world for five hours daily, six days a week, over a period of four weeks, covering a total of 3,407 pages of literature. Terry Reeve, the organiser and Reeve of Bungay, selected Harry Potter for the fundraising series due to the fact that some of the initial editions were printed within the town. He stated: “All theatres of this size struggle to remain viable financially so I thought ‘how we can raise money?’“I thought about reading the complete works of Shakespeare or the Bible from cover to cover but then I thought ‘let’s read all Harry Potter novels out loud’.“It’s a really lovely theatre and it’s a huge asset to Bungay – we get good audiences here, but theatres need the money for overheads and everything else.“[The money raised] will be really vital to keep heads above water.” Joe Edwards, a devoted Harry Potter enthusiast, was given the responsibility of commencing the read-a-thon by reading the initial passages of the Philosopher’s Stone. He commented: “It’s an honour. The first book was released the same year I started high school, so I embarked on my high school journey at the same time as Harry.“It was one of the things that got me into reading in general and for a lot of people my age it was a gateway to the world of literature and escapism.“Anything that can get young people reading is absolutely fantastic. I remember dreaming about being at Hogwarts and riding dragons.“It would be such a loss to the town if this theatre couldn’t carry on so it’s great to help raise vitally needed money just to keep the doors open.”